iPad Air Is Most Wanted Tablet For Christmas, Poll Shows

Apple's AAPL newest tablet is one of the hottest gifts of the year -- and the most wanted tablet.

On December 6, Benzinga asked its readers which tablet they were most likely to give as a gift this Christmas. Benzinga also wanted to know which tablet they would like to receive as a gift.

The results were not all that surprising.

Roughly 48 percent of respondents said that they wanted an iPad Air.

Google's Nexus 7 proved to be the second-most desirable tablet, garnering 16.4 percent of the votes. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 was also quite popular. The Amazon tablet came in third place with 10.9 percent. Apple's iPad Mini with Retina Display turned out to be the fourth most wanted tablet (earning 10.5 percent of the votes) followed by Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 (5.5 percent) and the Kindle Fire HDX (4.4 percent).

Related: Panasonic's New 4K Tablet Is 12X More Expensive Than Apple's iPad Air

While these results show how far the competition has come, they highlight the fact that Apple still dominates by a wide margin. The iPad Air alone is desired by nearly 50 percent of the poll's respondents.

When combined with the Mini Retina, Apple leads the market with nearly 59 percent.

Data Source: Benzinga

As the chart shows, desire does not necessarily translate to actual purchases.

Data Source: Benzinga

In this case, the iPad Air dominates with just 34.5 percent of the votes, followed by the Nexus 7 with 20.8 percent. The Kindle Fire HDX garnered a fair amount of attention from gift givers, earning 10.6 percent of the votes.

This could be attributed to the price ($229 for the seven-inch model versus $379 for the 8.9-inch iteration). The iPad Mini with Retina Display may be pricey (it starts at $399), but 9.5 percent of respondents said they were likely to give it as a gift.

The Kindle Fore HDX 8.9 rounded out the top five with 9.2 percent of the votes.

Data Source: Benzinga

Not surprisingly, the most desired tablets were not necessarily the devices that consumers already owned. Apple's three-year-old iPad 2 led the pack with 42 percent of respondents saying that they owned the device.

The iPad Air -- Apple's newest tablet -- came in second place with 17.5 percent. This is another sign of consumer preference for Apple. Google's Nexus 7 landed in third place with 15.1 percent of the votes, followed by the year-old Kindle Fire HD (9.4 percent) and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 (6.1 percent).

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.